Election time again

Let's run down the parties:

Liberal
Attempting to bribe me with money borrowed from my grandchildren

NDP
Attempting to bribe other people with money borrowed from my great-great-grandchildren

Conservative
Not even bothering to bribe me, won't even tell me how big the bribe is

Green
My mom telling me how naughty I have been, wants me to go sit in the corner and have a time-out

Since at this moment there doesn't appear to even be a candidate registered in my riding other than the Conservative incumbent, the choice for the moment is fairly easy.

Government

Creating problems today in order to promise to solve them tomorrow.

Congratulations to Egypt!

The People got what they asked for.

Now comes the hard part: getting what they want.

Danger

From BBC News:

Speaking to reporters in Washington earlier, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she condemned "in the most clear terms the disclosure of any information by individuals and or organisations which puts the lives of United States and its partners' service members and civilians at risk".

Being the aggressor nation in an unjustified war to find weapons of mass destruction that didn't actually exist.


That is how you put lives at risk, not by revealing events that never should have happened and should have been disclosed much earlier.

There has been ample opportunity to reveal and hopefully apologize for the wrongdoings of the previous administration, and do it on your own terms.

Democracy

Actually, I mistyped the title "Democrazy" initially. Somehow that seems appropriate.

Thought for the day:

Democracy should, in theory, be the last "big stick" that gets used when, for whatever major failing of human intellect, compassion or common sense, we can't come to a suitable consensus or compromise about something.

Somehow the polarization, us-vs-them, my-team-vs-their-team mentality (commonly referred to under the broad category of "politicization") has taken over, until all we get are "big stick" resolutions. That's kind of sad really.

Thought for the day

Reality is not subject to a vote.

Important Question #2

Does the government effectively get a 50%(ish) price reduction on labour costs because they eventually recoup much of what they pay out in taxes?

It is done

So, the election's done. The Conservatives won another minority. Overall, I figure that's pretty much about the best I could hope for, I suppose.

Despite my minimal efforts to the contrary, our local Conservative incumbent, James Moore, was re-elected. I was right about that. My estimate of 35% of the vote (down from 41%) was a little off the mark, with him taking 54.6% of the vote. That would be 25525 votes vs. 19961 last time, so despite low turnout he actually got more votes. Wow! I totally failed to call that!

Interestingly, the NDP candidate was well ahead of the Liberal candidate as well, which is reversed from last time. I guess the Liberals decided to vote for the Conservatives this time around.

In other news, the NDP appear to have taken the Western Arctic riding. Since I appear to have actually pissed off the only person I know who calls there home (which I feel quite badly about, by the way), I hope there is some consolation in her having made some difference by travelling home to vote, with a vote spread of only 523 votes.

So, all in all, that was probably the least useful $400,000,000 I've seen spent recently. Let's hope we don't have to do it again soon.

Two days to the election

Here's a link to the candidates. It will probably be invalid soon, but then so will this post.

I'm inclined to vote Conservative, but that's primarily to piss off a good friend of mine who recently told me that I should keep my disagreements that are only tangentially disagreeable to my own blog. (That's not strictly true, but I'm really fishing for a reason to vote for anybody this time around. But it is fun when she's all annoyed.) It's not really a disagreement though. As far as I'm concerned, that argument is already won. Go read The God Delusion and save all of us some pain. I've even added some handy atheism links to the sidebar in case going to the library is too much work.

I almost like my local Liberal candidate. He's seems like a smart guy, is in the computer business, and has various science degrees. He's also not going to win - his flyer was filled to the brim with meaningful, intelligent information, and even I said, "just give me the bullet points!"

Our Green candidate is a computer guy too, but as far as I can tell, he was just dropped into the riding to have somebody on the ballot. Even the lawn signs in my riding are just generic "Green Party" signs, they don't even have his name on them.

Our NDP candidate is pretty cute... that counts for something, right? I'm assuming our young, handsome Conservative incumbent wouldn't disagree.

Current inclination: Liberal by a hair, followed closely by Conservative, with Green coming up a very close third. Am I forgetting anybody? (Hint: yes.)

Current guess at the outcome: Conservative, with 35% of the vote (down from 41% last time).

Election time again

Who to vote for this time?

• Liberals - No, the Entitlement Party still needs a few more significant kicks to the head.
• Conservatives - Bribe me with my own money. Yay. At least they called an election before their copyright reform bill could pass, but I don't suspect that was a case of sudden blinding reason. They're still the closest thing we have to a Radical Christian Fundamentalist Party, although nothing like they've got in the U.S. Still, points against.
  
• NDP - Note to the Corruption Party (I live in BC, I've seen the NDP in power): The government is not a money pit. The only thing worse than bribing me with my own money is bribing other people with my money. OK, that's not the worst thing, the worst thing is destroying the economy with handouts until there's no more money left to hand out, then borrowing money to hand out. No. Just, no. No. Bad radical socialist, bad. I think you need a time-out.
• Green - Radical environmentalism, pseudo-libertarian everything else. Close enough. My local Conservative candidate is James Moore though, so they don't really stand a chance in my riding.

I think I'll just have to vote for the best candidate instead of the best party. At least James Moore wrote me back when I wrote to him. They still tried to pass the stupid copyright bill though, so that's not exactly a positive.